"Too bad… it seems like there aren't even half a living soul left in this city."
Holding the steering wheel, Li Qingyuan let out a faint sigh.
Originally, he had planned to wait until Jill's injuries fully healed before setting off. But now, plans had to give way to reality.
Even though the Umbrella Strike Squad would be wiped out in the future, this place had already been exposed.
So he could only quickly pack up the supplies he had, help Jill out of the building, and get her into a bus they managed to get running.
The good news was that even though Jill's hands were still weak, her foundational strength remained intact. Normal zombies posed absolutely no threat to either of them.
The only frustrating thing for Li Qingyuan was that his skills could only create explosives. He couldn't modify the bus in any meaningful way.
He could turn it into a car bomb, but he had no way to reinforce it externally or modify the interior. They were stuck driving a battered, falling-apart bus along the roads.
"I wonder how many survivors are still left…" Jill sat beside him, sighing.
She really couldn't understand it—T-Virus was now rampant worldwide, yet the Umbrella Corporation didn't bother saving the remaining people. Instead, they sent people to hunt her. What on earth was going on in the minds of those executives?
Given the current state of Earth, Umbrella could easily gather all survivors and establish a unified government—a true global authority.
Even if the survivors hated Umbrella with a passion, human beings were ultimately practical. When it came to the survival and propagation of humanity, petty hatred was meaningless.
Yet Umbrella's bizarre operations made no sense to her at all.
It was as if they were deliberately trying to wipe out every single survivor worldwide. She couldn't help but wonder if their brains had been kicked by a donkey.
"There should still be quite a few survivors now, but in a few years, who knows!" Li Qingyuan had learned through the past few days that the T-Virus had been raging across the globe for over a year. According to the movie timeline, the third installment's events hadn't even begun yet.
The entire Resident Evil timeline spans ten years; the story was still just beginning.
At present, at least a million survivors remained in the world. But as time passed, their numbers would only dwindle.
These survivors not only had to face mutated T-Virus monsters, but also countless sudden disasters.
With no one left to grow crops, food and other essentials would become increasingly scarce. Things that were trivial in normal times would eventually require risking one's life just to obtain.
"Looking at a world like this… I really don't know where the future is!" Jill awkwardly pulled out a pack of cigarettes, holding one between her lips.
"There's always hope. You have to believe me," Li Qingyuan said, lighting her cigarette as he stared at the distant horizon.
"Promise me… if I'm going to die, let me die before you. I don't want to cry again!" Jill inhaled deeply, then turned to him.
In this world where danger lurked around every corner, she didn't know if she would even see the sun rise tomorrow.
And after just ten days of contact, she had developed strong feelings for Li Qingyuan. She wasn't sure if she could endure it if he died before her.
"I won't die. And neither will you," Li Qingyuan replied with a faint smile. He certainly wasn't going to die here.
Though this had been the most dangerous mission he had ever encountered, he remained confident.
After all, he still had his trump card.
"Let's hope so… By the way, where exactly are you heading?" Jill quickly composed herself and asked the man studying the route.
"Las Vegas and Salt Lake City are in this direction," Li Qingyuan said, pointing toward a road sign.
"Sure, but there's no way this bus can take us that far." Earlier, so many zombies had responded to noise in the city. Jill couldn't move quickly, and this was the first vehicle they had gotten running. Hoping this dilapidated bus could carry them all the way to Las Vegas was impossible.
"No problem. If we see a better vehicle on the road, we'll switch."
After all, they were lacking in everything except vehicles. Abandoned cars littered the streets. Sure, most were either out of fuel or completely wrecked, but there were always a few that could still run.
Besides, unlike ordinary people, they weren't afraid of zombie attacks. A hundred zombies were nothing to them.
Even if they were surrounded by a horde, they could fight their way out with the weapons in their luggage. So the need for a car wasn't that urgent.
"Whatever you say!" Jill looked ahead, then glanced at Li Qingyuan studying the route. Her heart was beating faster than usual.
This man was strong, mysterious, and possessed abilities she couldn't even comprehend—plus that obviously high-tech case. It made her intensely curious.
But she wisely didn't probe further. She knew that if he wanted to tell her, he would.
"The squad sent to capture Jill Valentine has failed!"
At Umbrella's Las Vegas underground base, the Strike Squad commander was reporting the situation to Dr. Isaacs, who oversaw the entire facility.
"Failed?" Dr. Isaacs raised his head in surprise, glancing at the report in his hand.
"One Apache helicopter and two squads of special ops… all wiped out? How did that woman manage it?"
Honestly, capturing Jill Valentine had initially been about punishing her for leaking company secrets. But with the T-Virus now rampant worldwide, whether they captured her or not was irrelevant.
Umbrella's top priority was retrieving Subject 87—Alice. Her blood could perfectly fuse with the T-Virus. To create a virus-cleansing vaccine, they had to get her back.
Anti-viral serum and a virus-clearing vaccine were entirely different concepts. The former could resist T-Virus infection but had to be injected.
The latter could be released in the open. The vaccine would proliferate with the winds, reaching every corner of the world. Any infected organism exposed to it would experience gene collapse and die—effectively eliminating the virus globally.
Kill all living humans with T-Virus, then eradicate the zombies with the clearing vaccine. The so-called apocalyptic plan could be completed in just over a decade. That was Umbrella's true goal.
"Deploy two more squads to capture her. I suspect she may also be a T-Virus compatible subject!" Dr. Isaacs tossed the report onto the table and ordered.
If they couldn't get Subject 87 Alice, capturing a suspected compatible host to test was the next best thing.
(End of Chapter)